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We'll Always Have Paris
' |image= |series= |production=40271-124 |producer(s)= |story= |script=Deborah Dean Davis Hannah Louise Shearer |director=Robert Becker |imdbref=tt0708840 |guests=Michelle Phillips as Jenice Manheim, Rod Loomis as Paul Manheim, Isabel Lorca as Gabrielle, Dan Kern as Dean, Jean-Paul Vignon as Edourd, Kelly Ashmore as Francine, Lance Spellerberg as Transporter Chief |previous_production=Symbiosis |next_production=Conspiracy |episode=TNG A24 |airdate=30 April 1988 |previous_release=Skin of Evil |next_release=Conspiracy |story_date(s)=Stardate 41697.9 |previous_story=Skin of Evil |next_story=Conspiracy }} =Summary= En route to shore leave on Sarona VII, the Enterprise, along with other ships in the sector, experience a localized time-distortion, and soon after receive a distress-call from Dr. Paul Manheim in a nearby system. Commander Riker recalls that Manheim was ejected from the Federation Science Institute for conducting unauthorized experiments. They find the distress signal coming from a facility on a planetoid surrounded by a force-field. When they make contact with the facility, a woman requests help to save her husband, Dr. Manheim, and lowers the shields. The two are brought aboard and while Dr. Crusher tends to Dr. Manheim, who is having convulsions, Picard discovers his wife is Jenice, Picard's former love from before he decided to join Starfleet. Jenice warns that her husband was working privately in his laboratory, but that she didn't know what he was working on. She also alerts the crew to numerous security protocols that he has installed at the facilities. As the crew prepares to send an away-team to investigate the laboratory, they experience more time distortions, described by Data as "Manheim effects". In one instance Picard, Riker and Data enter a turbolift only to see their past selves conversing outside of the lift. The crew find that they cannot complete a transporter beam to the facility due to the instabilities. Dr. Manheim recovers long enough to explain that he was doing experiments involving time, gravity, and funnels to other universes, and suspects his last experiment is running out-of-hand. Manheim explains that he is trapped between two dimensions and Data determines that the experiment must be shut down during a time fluctuation or else it will simply grow larger. Manheim provides the crew with the correct coordinates to beam down to avoid the security fields. Picard admits to Jenice that he worried about losing her again after he left her in Paris, and vows to correct Dr. Manheim's experiment. As he is affected less by the distortions, Data is sent down alone and disables the remaining security measures before entering Manheim's laboratory. He finds a column of energy emanating from a dimensional matrix, the source of the time distortions. Data, though briefly affected by the time distortions, is able to add anti-matter to the matrix, causing the matrix to stabilize and halt the time distortions. Dr. Manheim fully recovers, and he and Jenice thank Picard and the crew for their help. Picard and Jenice use the holodeck to recreate one more encounter at a Paris café, before she returns with her husband to the planet. =Errors and Explanations= Plot Oversights # Here’s a brain twister for you. If time replays itself during the fencing match, how does Picard know it? His physical actions repeat themselves. He speaks the same words, so at least a portion of his thought processes are identical to the first time the events occurred. it some of his thoughts are identical, why not all? Indeed, wouldn‘t his physical state at the beginning ot the second pass through the sword salute exactly match his physical state at the beginning of the first pass through the sword salute? And it so, then wouldn‘t the memory of the sword salute disappear, making the second pass through the sword salute the only one remembered? (Or. . .maybe not?) This could be limited precursor of the Deja Vu encountered in Cause and Effect. # Ordering a holodeck creation to spend a few moments in contemplative retrospection, Picard tells the computer that he wants a setting twenty-two years ago, on April 9 at 1500 hours, three o'clock. Does this incredibly sophisticated computer really need Picard to remind it that 1500 hours is the same as three o'clock in the afternoon? Some personell aboard Enterprise may come from planets whose local days are more than 24 hours long. # Near the end of the episode, Data grabs a container with a measured portion of antimatter and walks it over to the rip in time. When the next disturbance hits, two more Datas appear, and the trio discusses which of the three of them is in the correct time frame. For some reason, the middle Data decides he is in the correct time frame. If Data walked up to the platform before the disturbance occurred, wouldn't the Data standing at the platform be the one in the correct time frame? (These time things give me a headache sometimes.) Keith Alan Morgan on Monday, April 19, 1999 - 08:17 am: (Nit Central) Well, the first 'hiccup' in time repeated the past, the second 'hiccup' showed the future, and the third time we have past, present and future. Each Data was listening to a different countdown, if Data put the antimatter in at the wrong time it wouldn't work so he needed to figure out which him was using the right countdown. Since each Data would think it was in the proper time sequence until they saw each other they couldn't use that as a basis for determining the proper time, so the middle Data must have used the previous two 'hiccups' to realize that he was seeing himself both before and after. Equipment Oddities # If the holodeck re-creation of the café in Paris was so accurate, shouldn't it have been raining? Keith Alan Morgan on Monday, April 19, 1999 - 08:17 am: (Nit Central) After telling the computer he wants the recreation, Picard specifies, "Warm spring day." While it is possible to have rain on a warm day, this instruction may have canceled out the accuracy of the recreation. # From a user interface standpoint, an extremely interesting exchange occurs after the final goodbyes between Jenice and Jean-Luc. She strolls back to the location of the holodeck door. When it fails to reappear, she remarks, “So much for my dramatic exit." At this, the door reappears! ln other words, anytime a person mentions the word "exit" in any context, the holodeck computer shows you the door? What about other commands, such as "freeze" and “continue"? Do users consciously have to avoid these words or suffer the disrupting consequences? Holodeck commands are usually prefixed with the word computer, but the effects of the time loops could be disrupting the control interface somehow in this instance. Internet Movie Database Incorrectly regarded as goofs # When Data is putting the antimatter in the stream, he asks for a 27 second count down. Data has an internal chronometer and is notorious for giving arrival times down to the second. He is also capable of handling multiple calculations and thoughts at the same time without distraction. Why would he need an external audio count down? (IMDB) Data requested the external audio count down before the time distortion occurred, because he knew that when it occurred, there would be more than one of him and then could link his chronometer with the correct dimension. # Jenice tells Picard she waited at the café all day for him, and also says that it was raining that day. (IMDB) The fact that the café recreated by Picard on the holodeck is an open-air café does not suggest that the original café hasn't got any indoor seating facilities as well, and that Jenice would have waited all day in the rain. IMDB Entry tt0708840 Nit Central # Keith Alan Morgan on Monday, April 19, 1999 - 08:17 am: They receive a set of coordinates, go there and find a relay source, then they get some new coordinates and Worf says they come from the same source as the previous message. Well, why not just go to the original source instead of being led around by the nose? Both sets were transmitted from the same place, but only the second set were transmitted direct - the first set were transmitted via the relay source. # Mannheim is surprised that an android is on a Starfleet vessel, but Mannheim only left Earth fifteen years earlier, Data had been in Starfleet for eleven years then. His dealings with Starfleet may have been very limited. =Sources= Category:Episodes Category:The Next Generation